The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
The Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
Our enemy, the devil, wants to control us, and his target is our will. The main way he tries to influence our will is through lying to us.
Neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.
I perceive two things in Scotland of the most fearful omen: ignorance of theological truth, and a readiness to pride themselves in and boast of it.
How glad the heathens would have been, That worship idols, wood and stone, If they the book God had seen.
People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.
The Jews did not go into darkness all at once. It was a gradual work, until they could not discern the gift of God in sending his Son.
The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.
We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The natural man is blind to it. He may fear God's power and admire His wisdom, but His holiness he cannot even imagine.
The great unthankfulness, contempt of God's word, and wilfulness of the world, make me fear that the divine light will soon cease to shine on man, for God's word has ever had its certain course.
One of Satan's most deceptive and powerful ways of defeating us is to get us to believe a lie. And the biggest lie is that there are no consequences to our own doing. Satan will give you whatever you ask for if it will lead you where he ultimately wants you.
The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.
People should never worship images. The spread of mental darkness is due to the prevalence of idolatry.
He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.
If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast if from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now being taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying "When the sage points to the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.
Sin has made us stupid, so that we can only learn the hard way.
What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.
The gospel is not for you who can save yourselves, but for those who are lost.
How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it.
Most closed heavens for the Christian are between his ears. Believing a lie empowers the liar.
Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us.
Unless we believe and see Jesus in the appearance of bread on the altar, we will not be able to see him in the distressing disguise of the poor.
